Lilac CreativeMay 28, 2026

Why Useful AI Beats Impressive AI 🤖

Why Useful AI Beats Impressive AI 🤖

Lilac Creative

The AI industry often prioritizes viral demos over practical tools. Learn why focusing on 'useful' AI that saves time during your daily workflow is more valuable than choosing tools designed solely to impress.

Why Useful AI Beats Impressive AI 🤖

Lilac Creative

The AI industry often prioritizes viral demos over practical tools. Learn why focusing on 'useful' AI that saves time during your daily workflow is more valuable than choosing tools designed solely to impress.

Chapters

00:00

Impressive vs. Useful AI

Understanding the core distinction between viral AI demos and practical, time-saving tools.

00:54

Defining the Two Approaches

01:48

Reliability and Practicality

02:16

AI in the Nonprofit Sector

02:52

Evaluating AI Tools Effectively

Transcript

00:00

Have you ever watched an AI demo at a conference and thought, wow, my organization could really use one of those.

00:05

And then six months later the tool is collecting dust in a Google Drive folder because it didn't actually fit your work.

00:12

Same more times than I'd like to admit.

00:14

But let's talk about why that keeps happening.

00:17

The AI industry spends most of its energy and its money building tools that look really incredible in a five minute demo.

00:24

but your nonprofit needs tools that work at 2 o' clock on a Tuesday when you're behind on email, two people called out sick and a board member just asked you for a report by tomorrow morning.

00:34

Those are completely different jobs and most of the time the tools designed for one are bad at the other.

00:40

So what does impressive AI look like?

00:42

Let me make this concrete.

00:44

Impressive AI looks like a grant writing tool that demos beautifully, but it produces drafts so generic you end up rewriting 80% of it anyway.

00:53

Or a donor engagement platform that promises hyper personalized outreach, but in real life it just sticks the donor's first name on the top of the same email.

01:00

Or a dashboard with really stunning looking charts all in your brand colors.

01:06

That doesn't actually answer the one question your director asks you every Monday morning.

01:10

Or an AI strategy consultant who delivers a 60 page deck and leaves your team doing the exact same thing that they were doing before, just with more slides.

01:20

These tools photograph really well.

01:22

They get applauded at conferences and they are often very expensive.

01:26

They tend to sit unused once the novelty wears off.

01:30

So what does useful AI look like?

01:33

Right, that's what I want.

01:34

I want useful AI.

01:35

Not the pretty stuff.

01:36

The pretty stuff is fun, but I want useful.

01:39

Pasting a messy board meeting Transcript into chat GPT and then getting back clear action items in two minutes.

01:45

That's useful AI.

01:46

Asking AI to turn your 30 page annual report into a one page summary that you can actually send to a busy funder.

01:53

That's useful.

01:54

having AI proofread your grant application 1 more time before you hit submit.

01:58

And finding like that last little detail that you needed to add.

02:01

Feeding 200 open ended survey responses into AI and getting an honest read on what your community is actually telling you.

02:09

We use that as your abuse project all the time during our post course surveys.

02:13

That is useful AI.

02:15

Drafting three versions of the same fundraising email and picking the one that sounds least like a robot.

02:20

Are you noticing something here?

02:21

The useful list is boring, right?

02:23

It's not transformational.

02:25

It's not revolutionary.

02:26

It's just your existing work.

02:29

Slightly faster.

02:30

That is the whole point.

02:31

Here's the easiest way I can explain it.

02:34

Every kitchen has one of those gadgets.

02:36

The avocado slicer, the fancy garlic press, the egg timer shaped like a chicken.

02:41

You bought it because it looked clever in the store.

02:43

You used it once, maybe twice, and now it lives in the back of a drawer.

02:49

And every kitchen also has a wooden spoon.

02:52

The wooden spoon is not impressive.

02:54

The wooden spoon shows up every single day.

02:57

A lot of nonprofit AI right now is being sold like the avocado slicer.

03:01

What you actually need is the wooden spoon.

03:04

Boring, reliable, but always within reach.

03:08

So before you buy another AI tool or invest in another AI consultant, ask one question.

03:15

What boring task am I already doing that this would replace?

03:19

If you can name it, try the tool on that one task and see if it actually helps.

03:24

But if you can't name it and the pitch only sounds good in the abstract, transform your fundraising.

03:30

Revolutionize your storytelling.

03:31

That is a tool built to impress, not to be used.

03:35

of thing I break down inside the Lilac Collective.

03:47

This is the kind of thing I break down inside the Lilac Collective.

03:50

So it's a working notebook of short videos, guides and tools from average people like me, using AI every day in a useful way with the wooden spoon link below.

04:02

See you in the next one.

Why Useful AI Beats Impressive AI 🤖 — Tella